Book Review: “The Boniface Option” by Andrew W. Isker

If we went for coffee today, we would talk about the huge shift going on in society and culture. The contents and the ideas of this book would be relevant to the conversation.

How did I get the book?

It came from Canada. I’m blessed to maintain some relationships from my time there. Patrick S. and I met at Camp IAWAH many years ago. It was fun to watch him come into the workforce, marry a lovely young lady and now father children. He’s an avid reader of political theory, history, theology and philosophy. My kinda guy!

A few months ago on X.com, I was complaining that I didn’t understand why everyone was upset at Christian Nationalism. I didn’t know what that was, or who was espousing it. I couldn’t figure out who they were reacting to. Patrick knew! He asked me if I had come across this book, and then graciously sent me a copy.

What is it about?

It’s a diagnosis of current western (North American) culture and society. The remedy the author puts forward is to mimic the strategy of St. Boniface when he went to evangelize the Germanic peoples. All of their belief system was tied to the concept of sacred trees. St. Boniface wasn’t intimidated by the spiritual power in the land, and chopped down a sacred tree. In doing that, it opened the door wide for the gospel.

The basic idea is to confront the culture head-on, speak the truth about it, describe it accurately (he calls it “Trashworld”), don’t respect it because it’s not respectable, and present Christ in a confident, unapologetic and forthright way.

What did I think?

This seems to have been written in the wake, or maybe as a response to Rod Dreher’s popular book “The Benedict Option.” Rod has been prescient over the years in diagnosing the culture. This author, Andrew Isker would disagree on the remedy. Rod advocated for mimicking St. Benedict and establishing cloistered communities of Christians to preserve the treasures of western culture and pass them on to the next generation.

Pastor Isker writes convincingly that we shouldn’t retreat, instead we should go on the offensive and confront the idols and ideology of our culture. He argues it’s a paper tiger.

From my perspective, Pastor Isker has been proved right. In reading this in January of 2025, there has been a wholesale shift from left to right in our culture and society. It was brought about by very courageous people that stood up to be counted and spoke the truth to the culture and wouldn’t back down. It was hard fought. I wish I could say that it had been done by committed evangelical Christians, but it wasn’t. It was done mostly by people from the left, classic liberals who were committed to truth and truthful speech regardless of the consequences. I believe that has come about because of the prayers of committed evangelical Christians.

We are moving into a different situation. It will require the same amount of courage and wisdom, but it will come from a different direction. Instead of the culture being left dominated, it will be right dominated. The big danger is Christianity without Christ. Other dangers will be harshness instead of gentleness and love. Generosity and forgiveness and compassion will be in demand.

There is a chapter that is going to be with me for quite some time. It was called “Masculine Economics” and laid out the vision for households. I’ve bumped around this concept. It was wonderful to see it fleshed out and put on display to see. It’s wild to consider that we have abandoned it in this brief blip of a hundred years. The idea of a household has been at the bottom of every culture of every society since the beginning of time. I loved every sentence in that chapter. It was inspiring. It may have come at the exact right time to make a profound difference in my children’s lives.

There was one other passage that I’m planning to take action on. It was in the chapter called “The Paideia of Christendom.” The chapter was talking about passing on the cultural treasures of Christianity in Western Society. Here’s the sentences that moved me:

If you are reading this, you have it within your power to recover something ancient, something lost, and most of all, something powerful. You personally have the ability to preserve the great heritage being lost. By reading Thucydides, Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, Saint Augustine, and others, and by having your children, learn their heritage, you are functioning in the very same way as monks who painstakingly preserved the cultural inheritance of the western world. You’ll be guarding and keeping the great garden from which men like Charles Martel, Charlemagne, and Alfred arose-men that made the work of missionaries like Saint Boniface possible.

You should be reading and listening to the great works of western tradition. You can recover that which was stolen from you. While there are downsides to the Internet, there has never been greater access to the wealth of historical knowledge and literature of Christendom. You have the ability to walk into the library of Alexandria at your fingertips, yet you would rather binge at the swine trough of Hulu. Yes, learning these things as an adult will take time and effort. You will have to go well out of your way to do this. You will likely not be able to go back to college much less grammar school, but there’s never been more access to ancient knowledge at your fingertips. You must look at this, as though you are an irredentist nobleman, raising an army to take back the homeland that is rightfully his. Yes, it should’ve been simply given to you, but you will have to fight for it instead. But you must understand, knowing the history of your people and knowing all that they loved and hated and what moved them to great passion is a powerful weapon.

This is why the architects of this Trashworld have purposely withheld it from you and your children. They don’t want you to share the same things that built the first Christendom. They want you rootless. They want to shape your moral imagination by increasingly perverted and inane entertainment. Denying this from them, and instead of drinking deeply from the fount of Christendom will hasten their defeat. You should be reading classical literature. You should be reading all the volumes of Will and Ariel Durant, all the work of John Julius Norwich, and more recently men such as Roger Scruton and Tom Holland. Your children should be learning Latin and Greek. And above all else, you should know the Bible. Even if you do this poorly (by the standards of what an educated man was prior to the mid 20th century) you and your children will be vastly better educated than nearly everyone alive, including (and especially) our truly unimpressive, intellectual elite.

Quite inspiring.

One final remark. The writing itself is top notch. My compliments to the team that produced it. I don’t know if the author is especially gifted, or the editor pressed for an excellent result. Either way, this is some of the best writing I’ve come across in some time. It was well worth remarking upon.

Conclusion:

Now I know what they were talking about in railing against Christian Nationalism. I’m grateful Patrick sent me the book. I wish I had read it three years ago. It came out in 2023. I’m grateful to read it now. May God be gracious to us as we navigate this cultural shift we are in.

How about you? How do you understand what’s going on in our society? Have you read this book? Is there a good criticism of its argument somewhere? I want to know.

andy